What is Pop-Art?

History - Key ideas

Pop art was born in England in the 1950s, if we stick to its neological birth, under the pen of the critic Lawrence Alloway. It is a legacy of the Independent Group, which notably includes Richard Hamilton, influenced by Duchamp and surrealism. Pop art, however, quickly became identified with an American artistic movement. In the United States, image culture is predominant, while the consumer society is developing. Television, advertising, cinema, magazines, all these media offer a rich visual culture, which artists such as Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol were quick to reinterpret. Especially since they want to put an end to the reign of abstract expressionism.

Andy Warhol, from an advertising background, quickly became the emblematic figure of the pop movement. In particular, he questions the principle of the uniqueness of the work, questions the notion of originality, and is inspired by the icons of the contemporary era (Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, etc.). His works are colorful, which constitutes another formal particularity of pop art. In 1963, Warhol opened the Factory in New York, where he surrounded himself with assistants and devoted himself more to cinema.

Irony is one of the driving forces of pop art, which likes to divert images and symbols from popular culture, but also from consumer society. Artists take hold of them and reinvest them, not as a form of consecration, but rather of questioning. This is demonstrated, for example, by Warhol’s famous Brillo Boxes (1964). It is not a ready-made but an appropriation by the artist of an everyday element: from a box, it becomes a sculpture (and a sacred work of art within the museum). Warhol plays with the notion of mimesis, of trompe l'oeil, one of the major issues in art since Antiquity. Thus, he questions the gap between reality and the perception we have of it.

Pop art sometimes has an impersonal character, notably with Warhol or Lichtenstein, who use mechanical reproduction techniques, sometimes from the industrial world. Lichtenstein's works, inspired by the world of comics, imitate the pattern of dots found in printing. It is not uncommon to also find among pop artists a taste for installation and three-dimensional representation, such as the soft sculptures of Claes Oldenburg, which take on an accent that is both humorous and disturbing.

Pop art likes to cultivate ambiguity. It is not always easy to know whether artists criticize or praise the consumer society that inspires them. In the same way, the pop movement wants to be popular and democratized, but its subjects are often linked to the world of money, cinema, and the jet set. One thing is certain: it celebrates the power of the image.

In the 1970s, pop art became more international. It spread particularly in Italy, where it inspired the renewal of the art of design.

What is Pop Art - Popular Art

1986

Medium

Acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas - Dimensions 106 x 106 inches (269.2 x 269.2 cm)

Credit Line: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Gift, Anne and Anthony d'Offay in honor of Thomas Krens, 1992

Copyright

© 2023 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New Yor

From the 1960s to the 1980s, Warhol produced several self-portraits. Made from a photograph, this one belongs to the Self-portrait with a Fright Wig series . The painter represents himself in a hair disguise. On a black background, the crazy appearance of her wig contrasts with her severe face, where a complex emotion can be read, between amazement and astonishment. The frontality, however, introduces a classical dimension into this portrait. As usual, the artist worked according to the principle of seriality by presenting his face in several colors, even by camouflaging it. Warhol, chameleon?

 Oil and Magna on canvas

106.7 x 91.4cm (42 x 36 in)

1970s

A curious self-portrait, that of Roy Lichtenstein. Instead of his face, the mirror he presents to us reflects nothing! This work demonstrates the underlying complexity in the work of this artist, known for being the first to be inspired by the world of comics and comics. By refusing to reveal his appearance to us, the artist implies that there is a deeper reality, unless it is an abysmal void. It's up to the viewer to choose. The technique is characteristic of Lichtenstein's work. His style, which tends towards universality and impersonality, is paradoxically immediately identifiable.

Jasper Johns, Savarin , 1977

As a metaphorical self-portrait, Jasper Johns (author of the famous Flag in 1955) provides the frontal image of the tin can he uses to store his brushes. With this intimate work, Johns takes us into the familiar world of his studio. At the bottom of the image, he has placed the hatchings characteristic of his work since 1972. Like other pop art artists, Jasper Johns has always paid a lot of attention to the means of reproduction and distribution of his works. The artist favored serial work, like Andy Warhol. However, Johns' work is characterized by a formal research that flirts with abstraction, and the intensive use of primary colors.

signed, dated '77 and numbered 45/50

lithograph printed in colors on Twinrocker paper

image: 38½ by 28⅛ in. 97.9 by 71.6 cm.. 

Executed in 1977, this work is number 45 from an edition of 50, plus 10 artist's proofs.

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